Forever Yonge

JOHN PHILLIPS

May 1, 2002

The 130-mile stretch west of Hearst is interrupted by not a single town. Forlorn, snowswept highways like this always cause me to hoard the beef jerky and eye the fuel gauge as if it were a medium-size mongoose. Thirty miles in, however, we cross a logging road. "Let's see where all this timber is coming from," suggests Jarem. This is how we came to meet Marc Gosselin, who lives alone in a six-by-ten-foot trailer parked next to a river, where, for the previous 90 days, he's been boring holes in the ice so he can pump out water. He directs the water atop the existing ice and, in this fashion, has increased the canopy's thickness from four inches to 44 inches. VoilÃ ! an "ice bridge" capable of supporting a 99-ton logging truck. At night, Gosselin amuses himself with a Walkman and a VCR. "And when I collected firewood this morning," he says, "I talked to a moose. Then you guys showed up." I hand him two copies of Car and Driver. He asks, "Are there any girls in here?"

The instant we regain Yonge Street, we run across an 18-wheeler and a moose who have rendered one another unto uselessness. The impact has sheared off the truck's entire left-front corner, right to the fire wall. Pieces of white fiberglass decorate the road for 100 yards. Moose are unpredictable. As you bear down on one, he'll retreat three steps, advance four, crab sideways in an Irish jig, then play the banjo.

At lunch in Beardmore, we order the "Full Meat Plate," and the owner delivers a primer on the local paper and chipboard mills. As he explains the intricacies of bunchers, grapplers, chippers, slashers, saw-timber stumpage, endogenous trade flows, and waferboard, Jarem stretches his arms into the air, cleverly stuffing the left one into a rotating overhead fan. The proprietor's wife takes two steps back. "Mercedes actually lets you drive their car?" she asks.

We spend the night in Fort Frances, a paper-mill town that smells like cat litter. On the drive in, I become distracted by the hallucinatory images that regularly appear in the G-wagen's pancake-flat windows, particularly at night. Cars seem to be coming at me from treetop level. At one point, I notice a shiny tow truck, yellow lights pulsating, parked atop the roof of a modest ranch home. I assume this is the handiwork of an eccentric, retired tow-truck zealot and point it out to my passengers. This is when I am relieved of my driving duties.

Day Five: Fort Frances to Rainy River, 55 miles

Today we trace the north shore of the frozen Rainy River, which defines the border between western Ontario and Minnesota. Just outside Fort Frances, we spy a nearly rustless 1930-era Reo "T" pickup parked in a drift. As we stop to kick tires, a kid emerges from a barn to inform that the Reo's owner works at the mill, making oriented strandboard. "I don't know much about his truck," he adds. "My passion is poultry science."

Rainy River, population 1000, is the terminus of Yonge Street, 1200 miles from the Toronto Star Building. The town is happy, bright, friendly-Sergeant Preston's Mayberry RFD, a frost-licked Lake Wobegon. Not the sort of place you'd pose a stripper on the hood of your G-wagen.

We examine the Rainy River Hotel, Susan's Corner Store, the Quality Bakery (where Aunt Bea serves hot bear claws to a chain-smoking clientele every morning), the Road Runner Motel, the Roadside Restaurant, and a brick train station that went kaput in 1965, when Yonge Street was first deemed "passable for tourist traffic." That was 169 years after Simcoe ordered convicts to yank stumps and 132 years after Toronto's town council okayed the first test mile of macadamized roadway.

* * *

A mere 20 years ago, I undertook the requisite Route 66 pilgrimage, along with every other American male who was pretending to search for his cultural roots but was actually attempting to eat McRib sandwiches and avoid his wife for eight consecutive days. Today, of course, Route 66 is but a tattered quilt of rotting strip malls and boiling frontage roads, interspersed with Kenworth-clogged interstates possessing all the depth and social significance of the Abdomenizer.

So it's comforting to discover that Canada's Route 66 is yet intact, its smoothly paved two-lane length spanning two time zones and hundreds of funky remembrances of the country's east-to-west evolution, one frontier outpost at a time. Yonge Street may not have spawned a TV show starring a 1960 Corvette, but it introduced me to one wife, Hockey Night in Canada, and a version of Beer Hunter that the citizens of Thunder Bay expect will be an Olympic sport in 2006.

Yonge Street ought to have its own theme music.

We eat dinner in a restaurant called Churchill's, whose menu lists 58 varieties of single-malt scotch, capped by a 25-year-old Macallan fetching $30 per ounce. "Come on, just one," whines Adam, who was actually born in Scotland. "We saved $245 today, right?"

Having thus lost the ability to reason, we repair to a North Bay bar imaginatively named "Girls Girls Girls," where the dancers inhabit one side of the room and the gents wearing zip-front duck-bib Carhartts the other. From our side emerges an occasional brave-man foray into enemy territory, a $20 bill clutched in his chapped hand like a flag of surrender. This reminded me so much of my high-school prom that I had to depart, but not before investigating a TV camera that the barkeep had installed so patrons could observe their own cars sitting dormant in the lot. "Mind if I turn up the sound?" I ask. "I'm curious how this episode turns out."

Day Three: North Bay to Hearst, 375 miles

For three-quarters of its length, Yonge Street snakes through a veritable Currier & Ives calendar: sleepy villages slathered in 36 inches of ivory "sugar snow"-whose top inch is the consistency of pea gravel-bookended by a vast diorama of tangled tamarack, frost-wracked black spruce, sedges, and birch trees stunted by the cold to a maximum height of 40 feet. A postcard every mile.

In the Shell station in Latchford, there's a 32-pound pike mounted on the wall. "Ice fishing?" I ask the attendant.

"Ho, jeez, no," he says. "Dis one here was hit by a water-skier." Latchford is home to the world's shortest covered bridge-"I've got more impressive bridgework in my mouth," notes Adam-plus the Ontario Loggers Hall of Fame, which we somehow miss.

Candidates for bypass surgery, we press on through the town of Swastika, past a sign noting that all streams here flow north into the Arctic Ocean, past the Shania Twain Centre (her father, Mark, of course, was recently the subject of a Ken Burns documentary), and into Cochrane. Yonge Street didn't reach Cochrane until 1927, 131 years after construction began-something to remember next time a nearby interstate upgrade appears to be progressing glacially.

Car and Driver visited Cochrane once before. It was here seven years ago that we lashed three SUVs atop a rail car hooked to the Polar Bear Express and made our way to the fabulous twin cities of Moose Factory and Moosonee. On the advice of counsel, I won't rehash the details of that adventure except to confirm we'll not be returning until at least one of the town fathers agrees to disarm and take his medication.

We stop for the night in the French Canadian community of Hearst, at a hotel whose lot is clogged with as many Ski-Doos as cars. Sixty feet behind the building, a half-dozen Ontario Northland locomotives are shunting cars overflowing with pine logs, and the clerk allows as how one of our rooms might be above the disco, where a bass drum is even now generating concussive fluctuations in air pressure. "Could get a little noisy back there," she estimates.

Just west of Hearst-as we pass a rust-red mountain of felled logs 70 feet tall and a half-mile long-the radio weatherman says, "Becoming brisk, with lows around minus 25 [C]." I felt that one of those descriptors might have been redundant.

In true Benz fashion, though, the seats are 12-hour comfortable, with cushion heaters that could fry pea bacon. Visibility is limitless, as from a fire tower. The body is as solid as a Henry Moore. And the butcher-block styling-"Post-Industrial Infantry," we dubbed it-never failed to astonish. "Is it really new, or did you guys just restore it?" was usually the first query.

Despite its molasses-slow throttle tip-in, which imbues the G500 with a deceptively slow-witted feel, it's a buzz bomb in a straight line: 60 mph in 7.6 seconds-as quick as a Lexus IS300 automatic, for God's sake. Never underestimate the will of 292 horses.

Three winters ago, I drove a Benz ML430 solo from Ann Arbor to Anchorage. Although not as spacious as the G-wagen, the ML was less tiring and vastly more competent, principally because newer SUVs so graphically transmit what their contact patches are up to-a godsend on slick surfaces. The G500, on the other hand, suffers a kind of slip-angle Alzheimer's common to 20-year-old trucks and first-time bowlers. And for any serious off-road work, of course, the thing wants more radically lugged tires.

There was a time when the Volkswagen Thing looked butch, retro, and militaristic, too. It didn't work out real great as a daily driver, either. -JP

"'European Style Lap Dancing'!" he squealed in reply, already so unfocussed that he was reading every neon sign in a stream-of-consciousness garden-hose torrent. "How's that differ from, say, Madagascar-style lap dancing?"

To find out, we spent cash in a Yonge Street landmark known as the Brass Rail. For only $50, one of this establishment's 130 performing artists will pose atop your GelÃ¤ndewagen. Or ours. This triggered our first Yonge Street traffic jam. While she waited for flashbulbs to pop, this winsome lass studied a copy of Car and Driver, fixing upon a photo of uncooked luncheon meat slathered in Finnish fish paste. Then she asked, "How old are your readers?"

"Good one," said Jarem.

It's worth reporting that three strippers told me I was witty, entertaining, and quite handsome in an intellectually prepossessing sort of way. I think they really meant it.

We ate dinner at a pub called the Irish Embassy, joined by former Formula Atlantic star and race-school instructor Gary Magwood. Magwood revealed that he was writing a book called Driving Tips That Are Actually Useful, but when Adam slopped a half-pint of Molson on his STP jacket, Gary added, "but not for you guys."

A firkin is a quarter-barrel, or nine Imperial gallons-about what each of us imbibed that night. In the morn at the Hotel Victoria ($105 per night), we were alarmed to observe colorful fireflies when we pulled on our boots. I mention this merely to alert the concierge, who will doubtless wish to summon exterminators.

Day Two: Toronto to North Bay, 215 miles

In Toronto, all roads north lead to "cottage country." You can observe the giddy chaos of departure on any Friday night. Yonge Street is no exception. Lose control of your car in the first 100 miles and you'll ram a Tim Hortons, a marina, a snowmobile showroom, or the dark granitic outcroppings of the Precambrian Shield, which randomly jut up through the snow like daggers in a wedding cake.

In the small town of Bradford (see map), we stop at the Guild of Automotive Restorers, whose showroom is filled with a whale-black 1959 Chrysler Imperial, replete with plexiglass bubble top. It was used by Queen Elizabeth on a royal tour of Canada. The first $112,000 takes it. I don't believe Liz ever took the wheel. Behind the showroom reposes a PT Cruiser with homemade wheel spats painted bridge-primer red. Felony reckless customizing, we decree.

In Barrie, the sky is the color of oatmeal, and the temp is in the low teens. We halt at a Benz dealership to see if we can persuade the G500's in-dash navigation system to display something akin to Ontario roads. This is possible, the dealer informs, just as soon as we purchase the appropriate CD. He has one, too. Price: $245.

Sans CD, we roll into Gravenhurst-near Lakes Muskoka, Joseph, and Rosseau, the official start of Cottage Country-and almost instantly encounter an icy hill that the G-wagen refuses to climb, even with front and rear axles locked. It took Simcoe's workers 54 years to reach this same piece of geography, whereupon they helped colonize the area by doling out 81-hectare land grants. They didn't possess snow tires or a GPS, either.

On the way into North Bay, we pass the Dionne Quints Museum (closed) and Lake Nipissing (unfortunately, open), where a policeman in a six-passenger Bombardier has just plunged through the ice to a frigid demise. We also meet a Grizzly Adams look-alike who possesses not only many of Dick Teague's original concept drawings but also the prelaunch marketing plans for the AMC Pacer. We assure him this is hugely valuable.

Yonge Street is Toronto's main north-south thoroughfare, though it also happens to meander through Ontario's black spruce and jack pines for another 1200 or so miles. This makes it Canada's longest street-a claim easy to make but tricky to verify, like boasting to girls that you possess a welder's certificate. Thirty-one-million Canadians know where Yonge Street starts. About seven-three of them named Jerry, I think-know where it ends.

The street is old-two centuries and change, in fact. Construction commenced in 1796, when John Graves Simcoe began fretting that Americans were likely to invade and steal Canada's cleverest comedians for live TV shows. He thus insisted that a broad avenue of retreat be carved out of the limitless bush, leading at least as far north as Lake Simcoe, which, curiously enough, bears his name. (Schoolchildren worldwide can confirm that history is chockablock with such coincidences.) Simcoe named the road after the British Secretary of War, Sir George Yonge-a little pandering there, sure-but had a deuce of a time getting the project rolling. For one thing, Toronto hadn't yet created a highway department. Simcoe thus ordered settlers along the highway's path-some sitting innocently in their La-Z-Boys, softly humming show tunes-to kindly step outside and spend 12 days each year felling trees and draining mud wallows. Plus, he passed the ever-entertaining Stump Act of 1800, decreeing that convicted drunks would be furnished logging chains with which to remove Yonge Street stumps. Interesting sense of humor, there.

"Drunks chaining stumps," I repeated three times to C/D's assignment editor, certain that this mellifluous mantra would wheedle the story to a speedy approval.

It did. He flipped me the keys to a $73K Mercedes-Benz G500, a kind of silver toolshed on wheels. "It has three locking differentials," he pointed out. "For snow."

It also had four Yokohamas whose tread was nicely suited to Solo II competition.

To ensure I faithfully sampled all pertinent elements of the Canadian Experience, I invited along ex-Group 44 driver Bill Adam, raised in Ontario. Fourteen years ago, however, Adam developed a deadly allergy to any form of water that had reverted to the solid state. He thus moved to Miami. When I collected him at the Toronto airport, he was wearing sneakers and a nylon STP Racing windbreaker guaranteed to forestall chilblains down to temperatures as low as 60 degrees Fahrenheit.

I gave him a look. "No, no, it won't be a problem," he assured, clapping me on the back. "I grew up here. Did you know that, by the 1820s, there were 60 taverns on Yonge Street?" He'd at least done his homework.

"Mind you, I don't know all 60 of them personally," he continued. "Fifty, maybe."

Day One: 30 miles in Toronto

The 5423-pound Geländewagen (which, in formal German, means "chromed rotisserie toaster oven") is achieving only 14.8 mpg, meaning that most of my interaction with Canadians, apart from my first marriage, will manifest at Shell stations. At the first such stop-and I can produce photographer Greg Jarem as a witness in this matter-the attendant said of the Benz: "Real nice rig dere youse guys got. Beauty, eh?" That's what he said.

I then drove directly to 1 Yonge Street, the Toronto Star Building, hard on a quay poking into the black waters of Lake Ontario. Sadly, Jarem missed our journey's kickoff. He was wrestling with the rear-seat headrests, which were obstructing his view. Neither of us could remove them, so I consulted the owner's manual. Here's what it said: "To remove the head restraint: Remove the head restraints using both hands."

"That some kind of code?" Jarem asked.

"It's like a Zen koan," I suggested as we passed the Hockey Hall of Fame. "It's warning us to get serious and focus more earnestly on the business at hand."